Human nature I'm afraid. I won't believe it until it's confirmed by Fox!
Some more 'liberating' going on here. Can't say I wouldn't be tempted.
Four US soldiers 'held for $1m theft'
Oliver Burkeman in Washington
Thursday April 24, 2003
The Guardian
Four American soldiers have been arrested for trying to steal nearly $1m found hidden in Saddam Hussein's Baghdad palaces, it was reported yesterday.
Three are accused of taking $600,000 (£380,000) in $100 bills and hiding them in a tree, and the fourth allegedly took $300,000 and stashed it in several places, including the glove compartment of his truck.
Jonathan Foreman, a New York Post reporter with the 4th Battalion, 64th Armoured Regiment, in Baghdad, reported Major Kent Rideout as saying that the men would be court martialled.
The arrests were made after troops found $656m hidden behind breeze blocks in a district near the Tigris river last week. A further $112m was found this week.
Brigadier General Vincent Brooks said at central command in Qatar that efforts would be made to discover whether the cash was genuine. If it was it would be returned to the Iraqi people.
The cash, which appears to have been abandoned by Ba'ath party officials and Republican Guard officers when they fled the capital, has been moved to the international airport for safe keeping.
Officers discovered that some had been stolen after realising that one of the 37 strongboxes - each with $4m - found had been opened without authorisation.
"You can understand how the greed took over, when just one wad of this cash can pay off your mortgage, send your kids to school, etc," the Post quoted an officer as saying.
The parallel with the David O Russell film Three Kings, in which three US soldiers try to steal suitcases full of gold bullion taken by Iraq from Kuwait at the end of the 1991 Gulf war, did not go unremarked.
The Pentagon and the military authorities in Qatar and Kuwait said they were trying to confirm the arrests.
[ 04-24-2003, 07:20 AM: Message edited by: Donut ]